You want to summon big minions with druid sidequest so putting these small ones is contraproductive
I was afraid of that when creating the deck, but it turns out that if you have 4 minions, of which you'll typically catch one in your opening hand, in a minion-rich deck, the chances of summoning a small minion are pretty low. And if you do summon one after playing Embiggen, you get a yeti in stats, which isn't bad for a 1-mana investment.
That is the low roll, but since you're keeping those cards in the mulligan, there are usually 3 of them in the deck from a pool of 17 minions, so less than 20% chance to pull one of them. And after one Embiggen they're actually not that bad to pull. All in all, it wasn't a problem in the games I played.
For Druid, the main quest more or less builds the deck for you, so I thought that would be an interesting class to try this on. This was the result: (click it for the guide with more details)
If there are rush minions in every set, it is effectively a core mechanic and they might as well use it in Classic too.
Changing Warsong Commander to grant small minions rush makes sense. We've seen Houndmaster Shaw being good but not broken and the Commander has half as much health, making it a lot easier to remove. Whether the card would be good enough to play after that change, I don't know, but it would certainly bring it closer to playable than it currently is.
Edit: Also, which cards Galakrond buffs for Warrior or discounts for Rogue can matter quite a bit. But as several cards are drawn, you'll see average results a lot more than super good or super bad results.
The only downside to this card is it gets countered hard by Hungry Crab and zephyrs the great to swing tempo early game. But that its forcing Hungry Crab as an inclusion only shows how powerful and innocent looking this card can be.
Zephrys is a bit of an awkward counter though: it requires drawing a one-of very early and playing a pure highlander deck (about half the decks running Zephrys include some duplicates). Then you have to play Zephrys and the Crab on the same turn, since otherwise the Slurper trades into Zephrys. If the Shaman player is on the coin, they can even choose to play the Slurper on turn 2, since it's likely Zephrys will be played for ramp or tempo on turn 2 if it's in the hand.
Were people including Hungry Crab in their deck specifically to counter Slurper? I think I only saw Hungry Crab in decks that were also running Fishflinger.
In my opinion, Shaman still has a lot of good cards, but after the nerfs it lacks insane cards, so it currently cannot keep up with the power spikes that other classes have.
I think Sludge Slurper is a risky card to unnerf: the nerfed version is actually fair value for mana, so they're going to boost a weak class by giving it an overpowered 1-drop. The Slurper fits into multiple Shaman archetypes: murlocs, battlecry and overload, so if any of those gets powerful new cards, the Slurper has the potential to push those archetypes over the edge into broken territory. I think the risk is highest for murlocs and overload, since those decks are more likely to snowball than battlecry decks, at least while the latter get their power from relatively slow cards like the quest and Shudderwock.
With all echoes costing at least one mana now, the nerf to Reckless Experimenter has become mostly obsolete, so it would indeed make sense to revert that one.
Once upon a time nerfed cards often became unplayable, but most of the recent nerfed cards are either still being played or at least are borderline playable. For example Raiding Party, Bonemare and the Dr. Boom hero card are still usable at their increased cost; unnerfing them may not break the meta, but there is also no real need for it. However, Call of the Wild saw very little play after being nerfed, so unnerfing that could be good.
Unnerfing Leeching Poison (or actually Kingsbane, indirectly), the quest or Apothecary would bring back archetypes that were not fun to play against. I hope they have enough sense to not do that. Similarly, Undertaker in its original form (+1/+1) could lead to games snowballing out of control from turn 1; I don't think unnerfing it would be good for the meta.
Extra Arms might be safe to revert to its buffed state if they're finally going to nerf Divine Spirit. But I think it might just be too strong in other decks as well. Also, I think it's more likely they decide to put Divine Spirit in the Hall of Fame instead of nerfing it, which wouldn't help Wild.
Even after its nerf, Faceless Corruptor is one of the more powerful cards in the meta: every deck that plays small minions runs it and when it's played it often has a big impact on the board. They would be crazy to unnerf it.
I think it's more likely that a Shaman card gets unnerfed, since that class is now relatively weak compared to the other classes. My guess would be Invocation of Frost, since that is the safest revert. For example unnerfing Sludge Slurper would buff battlecry decks, murloc decks and overload decks, so there is much more potential for it to lead to an overpowered deck.
The Bladed Gauntlet interaction is shown in this video from HysteriA, so unless it was changed in a patch, it works.
I think Noggenfogger does randomize among targets of the same type, so there is no risk of punching your own minions or face, but it doesn't seem to take detailed restrictions on cards into account.
I think that if Southsea Deckhand was added today, it would most likely read "Battlecry: Gain Charge if you have a weapon equipped". But apparently they didn't think it was enough of a problem to warrant a change. So I both agree and disagree with you: it does make the card more complicated, but cards with a similar complexity already exist.
Regarding Shaw: are you sure he works like that? I thought that the minions would lose rush if Shaw dies, but if a rushing minion is already mid-attack, that attack won't be aborted because it loses rush, since the validity of targets is only checked at the start of the attack. For example, attacking face is possible with Bladed Gauntlet in the presence of Mayor Noggenfogger, as long as the attack starts against a minion.
If they keep the rules the same, there is no point in doing a sequel, but if they change the rules then the old cards cannot be kept because they might not make sense under new rules.
I don't think I would play it if it meant starting a new collection from scratch, unless the game was extremely generous with its freebies. I don't even have the Classic set complete yet after 6 years of playing.
What I would like to see is Hearthstone AR, if it's done like the AmazingLP card reveal videos.
They could have made it "Your minions with 3 attack or less haveCharge", similar to Southsea Deckhand. That would at least have solved the interaction with Frothing Berserker.
Segfault at address 0000001f, that sounds like they're trying to access data from a struct via a null pointer. Most of Hearthstone is written in C# and should therefore not be able to crash in this way, but maybe some of its native code is missing a null check or has a fragile initialization sequence.
Note that it's Mage cards from Standard, so Year of the Raven + Year of the Dragon. Which makes it worse, since half of those are going to rotate soon.
(I guess Blizzard fixed their announcement after Flux copy-pasted that quote.)
I guess this is an experiment and if it goes well, they will do packs for other classes as well, on a rotating basis. I just hope that if this doesn't sell well, they'll conclude that they have to do something about the pricing rather than abandon the experiment altogether.
They're not using the "playhearthstone" stream, instead they're giving out packs for watching any 3rdparty stream as long as it's in the Hearthstone category.
I was afraid of that when creating the deck, but it turns out that if you have 4 minions, of which you'll typically catch one in your opening hand, in a minion-rich deck, the chances of summoning a small minion are pretty low. And if you do summon one after playing Embiggen, you get a yeti in stats, which isn't bad for a 1-mana investment.
Reading is such a hard skill to master ;)
Thanks; I'll update the guide.
Edit: So if you Embiggen twice and then play Frizz, would Ysera cost 8? Or does it not stack in that way?
Historically they've always invited different streamers for the first and last reveal streams.
I'm just glad Kibler is back; I think this is the first time Blizzard asked him for their streams since they banned Blitzchung.
That is the low roll, but since you're keeping those cards in the mulligan, there are usually 3 of them in the deck from a pool of 17 minions, so less than 20% chance to pull one of them. And after one Embiggen they're actually not that bad to pull. All in all, it wasn't a problem in the games I played.
Has anyone tried making a deck with Questing Explorer, Licensed Adventurer and Sky Gen'ral Kragg and activating those cards via sidequests instead of main quests?
For Druid, the main quest more or less builds the deck for you, so I thought that would be an interesting class to try this on. This was the result: (click it for the guide with more details)
Did anyone else try using sidequests like this? And if so, what were the results?
If there are rush minions in every set, it is effectively a core mechanic and they might as well use it in Classic too.
Changing Warsong Commander to grant small minions rush makes sense. We've seen Houndmaster Shaw being good but not broken and the Commander has half as much health, making it a lot easier to remove. Whether the card would be good enough to play after that change, I don't know, but it would certainly bring it closer to playable than it currently is.
There was also the nerf to Giggling Inventor, which wasn't strictly a Caverns nerf but did happen around the time that deck was making a resurgence.
I agree with most of your points, but I feel that with Pharaoh Cat, there is quite a difference between getting Generous Mummy versus Winged Guardian.
Edit: Also, which cards Galakrond buffs for Warrior or discounts for Rogue can matter quite a bit. But as several cards are drawn, you'll see average results a lot more than super good or super bad results.
Zephrys is a bit of an awkward counter though: it requires drawing a one-of very early and playing a pure highlander deck (about half the decks running Zephrys include some duplicates). Then you have to play Zephrys and the Crab on the same turn, since otherwise the Slurper trades into Zephrys. If the Shaman player is on the coin, they can even choose to play the Slurper on turn 2, since it's likely Zephrys will be played for ramp or tempo on turn 2 if it's in the hand.
Were people including Hungry Crab in their deck specifically to counter Slurper? I think I only saw Hungry Crab in decks that were also running Fishflinger.
In my opinion, Shaman still has a lot of good cards, but after the nerfs it lacks insane cards, so it currently cannot keep up with the power spikes that other classes have.
I think Sludge Slurper is a risky card to unnerf: the nerfed version is actually fair value for mana, so they're going to boost a weak class by giving it an overpowered 1-drop. The Slurper fits into multiple Shaman archetypes: murlocs, battlecry and overload, so if any of those gets powerful new cards, the Slurper has the potential to push those archetypes over the edge into broken territory. I think the risk is highest for murlocs and overload, since those decks are more likely to snowball than battlecry decks, at least while the latter get their power from relatively slow cards like the quest and Shudderwock.
With all echoes costing at least one mana now, the nerf to Reckless Experimenter has become mostly obsolete, so it would indeed make sense to revert that one.
Once upon a time nerfed cards often became unplayable, but most of the recent nerfed cards are either still being played or at least are borderline playable. For example Raiding Party, Bonemare and the Dr. Boom hero card are still usable at their increased cost; unnerfing them may not break the meta, but there is also no real need for it. However, Call of the Wild saw very little play after being nerfed, so unnerfing that could be good.
Unnerfing Leeching Poison (or actually Kingsbane, indirectly), the quest or Apothecary would bring back archetypes that were not fun to play against. I hope they have enough sense to not do that. Similarly, Undertaker in its original form (+1/+1) could lead to games snowballing out of control from turn 1; I don't think unnerfing it would be good for the meta.
Extra Arms might be safe to revert to its buffed state if they're finally going to nerf Divine Spirit. But I think it might just be too strong in other decks as well. Also, I think it's more likely they decide to put Divine Spirit in the Hall of Fame instead of nerfing it, which wouldn't help Wild.
Even after its nerf, Faceless Corruptor is one of the more powerful cards in the meta: every deck that plays small minions runs it and when it's played it often has a big impact on the board. They would be crazy to unnerf it.
I think it's more likely that a Shaman card gets unnerfed, since that class is now relatively weak compared to the other classes. My guess would be Invocation of Frost, since that is the safest revert. For example unnerfing Sludge Slurper would buff battlecry decks, murloc decks and overload decks, so there is much more potential for it to lead to an overpowered deck.
The Bladed Gauntlet interaction is shown in this video from HysteriA, so unless it was changed in a patch, it works.
I think Noggenfogger does randomize among targets of the same type, so there is no risk of punching your own minions or face, but it doesn't seem to take detailed restrictions on cards into account.
I think that if Southsea Deckhand was added today, it would most likely read "Battlecry: Gain Charge if you have a weapon equipped". But apparently they didn't think it was enough of a problem to warrant a change. So I both agree and disagree with you: it does make the card more complicated, but cards with a similar complexity already exist.
Regarding Shaw: are you sure he works like that? I thought that the minions would lose rush if Shaw dies, but if a rushing minion is already mid-attack, that attack won't be aborted because it loses rush, since the validity of targets is only checked at the start of the attack. For example, attacking face is possible with Bladed Gauntlet in the presence of Mayor Noggenfogger, as long as the attack starts against a minion.
If they keep the rules the same, there is no point in doing a sequel, but if they change the rules then the old cards cannot be kept because they might not make sense under new rules.
I don't think I would play it if it meant starting a new collection from scratch, unless the game was extremely generous with its freebies. I don't even have the Classic set complete yet after 6 years of playing.
What I would like to see is Hearthstone AR, if it's done like the AmazingLP card reveal videos.
They could have made it "Your minions with 3 attack or less have Charge", similar to Southsea Deckhand. That would at least have solved the interaction with Frothing Berserker.
Segfault at address 0000001f, that sounds like they're trying to access data from a struct via a null pointer. Most of Hearthstone is written in C# and should therefore not be able to crash in this way, but maybe some of its native code is missing a null check or has a fragile initialization sequence.
Note that it's Mage cards from Standard, so Year of the Raven + Year of the Dragon. Which makes it worse, since half of those are going to rotate soon.
(I guess Blizzard fixed their announcement after Flux copy-pasted that quote.)
I guess this is an experiment and if it goes well, they will do packs for other classes as well, on a rotating basis. I just hope that if this doesn't sell well, they'll conclude that they have to do something about the pricing rather than abandon the experiment altogether.
They're not using the "playhearthstone" stream, instead they're giving out packs for watching any 3rdparty stream as long as it's in the Hearthstone category.